Ambushed

I often get asked about the pretty models I get to shoot. Truth is, I rarely shoot any models. I much more often shoot nerdy authors, middle aged store owners, camera shy teachers and now...now people dressed as bushes. 

After doing several jobs associated with the Nana Projects I got asked by Annie who often works with Nana to do a shoot with her side project Ambush Theater. I said yes and we set out to Lake Montebello in Baltimore to get some laughs, creep some people out and see how smart dogs are. 

P.S. you should also check out Annie's amazing papercuts at her blog, they were just featured on the cover of City Paper in Baltimore. 

Cleaning Out The Summer Files

Going through some files I hadn't got around to editing from early this summer. I was out shooting a musician friend of mine in the city when we a drum core passed by us. It's hard to NOT follow a drum core. So off we went into the projects and this is what we found. 

Afternoons In The Park

A little Holga action in Patterson Park. 

Project Coffee; One World Cafe

Project coffee still lives! 

I've been a little derelict in my duties to Project Coffee. Please forgive me coffee gods. We drank at the coffee temple known as One World Cafe which is in Charles Village right next to Johns Hopkins University. The place is part cafe, part bar and part veggie restaurant and ALLLLLL good. Turns out too that it's the rare cafe open on a Sunday morning. I went to two others and found them closed before going to OWC. You got to love a place that you can give initials like that. 

Met up with Sean there, actually after a few hours before meeting up with some friends from Silver Spring for breakfast. Still hungry though I got Chai Latte, which is becoming my staple, and a giant slab of coffee cake. Then I proceeded to eat Sean's nachos. As you can see from the pictures he was pretty upset. 

I've gone to the OWC quite a few times now and it's always fun. A cool group of people work there including the American version of Russel Brand. I also once met there Mackenzie Astin, the star of one of my favorite movies as a kid, Iron Will, which come to found out pretty much no one else ever saw. 

So hooray for One World Cafe. 

The Kings of DRU HILL

Well my Dru Hill shoot has finally run so thought I'd let you see some photos. You can see the article here at Baltimore Magazine's website. It was quite the fun shoot, the guys were actually a lot of fun to work with. I had been expecting the worse and was very pleasantly surprised and got nearly 5 hours from them. 

Lot's of props go out to Nunz, Jonathan Hanson, Kristin Putchinski and Michelle Johnson for all the help! Also to Wrightway Studios for being so kind to let us shoot at your beautiful facility! 

We shot this shot in Wrightway Studios here in Baltimore. From left to right we have Tao (who I unfortunately kept pronouncing like Tao of Buddhism, but is actually pronounced "tay-o"...I think I never felt confident on that) Nokio, Jazz and Sisqo. 

I think this has become my favorite shot, I just love the studio and I think the lighting turned out really well thanks to Johnny H on the lights.  

Shot this at an abandon row house right down from Druid Hill Park in the neighborhood that most of the guy grew up in. Nokio gave one of my favorite quotes, "Just give me a paper bag and I'd feel right at home here, don't even need to have booze...just the bag."

I didn't notice it until editing but I love the sign in the top left of the picture here. 

This was shot in Druid Hill park, the namesake of the band. Sisqo told me this was the first time the band had ever been photographed in the park. He said they did however film the Thong Song Remix video here...I appreciated that little factoid. 

The magazine used this as you can see from above as the features cover shot. 

We shot in Frederick Douglass High School where Jazz and Nokio went to school and first started performing and started forming the group. Dru Hill was actually a very organically started group...so Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, 98 Degree and all the rest of you can suck it. 

It was really fun to shoot a group of guys who were so comfortable in front of the camera. Told them I needed photos that looked like they were telling stories about high school and that's what I got! 

The Crew

This photo of me also doubles as my application for whitest man alive. 

Bob Hieronimus

A little over a week ago I got to shoot one of the nicest guys I have met in Baltimore! Bob Hieronimus is a local renaissance man. He has a radio show about conspiracies and signs, kind of Da Vinci Code stuff. He is a painter, painting murals, art cars, canvas and seemingly whatever other surface he wants. He has written several books. Back in the day he was a musician and friend of musicians like Jimi Hendrix, The Lovin Spoonful, Bob Marley and his sons and many others.

What mostly struck me about Bob and his wife Zoh was just how nice they were. I shot with Bob for 

two days for Baltimore Magazine. The first day at his house where he does his radio show. We did the 

photos of Bob and Zoh in the radio studio. It was a very small space and it was difficult to light but they were extremely patient and we spent much of the time laughing while I got all the lights right. 

After I was done Bob wanted to know what kind of music I was into. I named a few current bands that I was really liking and then told him I really loved Bob Dylan. As soon as I said that de asked me if I wanted a T-Shirt, I kind of thought it was a joke. Bob then disappeared and came back with a Dylan, Carlos Santana concert shirt from the early 90s. That wasn't enough though and he disappeared again and came back with a book on Dylan that he said he really loved and gave it to me. Somehow the Lovin Spoonful came up and I mention that I really liked their music too. Off went Bob again and this time came back 

with a photo he'd taken of the band and it was autographed by all the members!

Day 2 we met up at one of the murals he's done and took pictures of him in front of it. He drove there 

with his art car and afterwards we went up into Druid Hill Park and shot him with his car in the woods. 

It is rare that I get this kind of time with anyone, but Bob was so patient and nice through it all and 

willing to do whatever I wanted. I figured I'd see if he wanted to grab lunch so off we went to Bob's 

favorite hang the James Joycee Pub down in Harbor East where EVERYONE knew him. After a long 

lunch of chewing the fat we finally had to get on with our days, but not before Bob gave me a big hug 

and told me to keep in touch.

Shoots like that make it impossible to not love my job!

Baltimore Gothic

One of my favorite photo shoots I've done to date is my Baltimore American Gothic shoot. Not only did I love the way the final image came out, but it was also one of those shoots where you spend half of your time laughing. 

I used to live in the Charles Village area of Baltimore and one of the big things there is to paint your house all funky colors. Something about that got me thinking about doing a Baltimore version of American Gothic. I wanted to do a humorous play on it and somehow this led me into getting a kid involved. 

One of my favorite models to have ever worked with is Claire Wright who is the wife in this picture. We hit it off from the very first time we shot together and continued doing shoots together. She was able to  introduce me to Jack, the boy in the picture who turned out to be great. Jack I think was not quite 4 when we took these photos. I really love shooting with kids, if for nothing else than the hilarious things they say and do and Jack didn't disappoint. He called me Mr. Daniel for the whole shoot, which every time he said it made me laugh.  

I was able to get Claire's dress and pin from Charlotte Elliott's, an antique store in Hampden. My stylist ended up not showing up and Jack's mom and I ended up getting Jack's shirt from Wal-Mart and his jacket from Marshall's along with Claire's sweater. The "pitchfork" was a Target special. Makeup was done by Michelle Johnson. 

The image above and to the right is the unedited version of what I did. I ended up re-shooting the house after the construction was done and to get the right angle. I got some much needed editing guidance from fellow photographers Jacqueline Schlossman and Howard Ehrenfeld

. 

I think this little collage does a pretty good job of showing why I love working with kids. Jack's mom had told him that for the photos he needed to look angry. Well as soon as I got ready to shoot he gave me his angry face and it was adorable, but WAY too much. I asked him if he could give me a half angry face. He thought about it for a moment and then gave me the face in the first picture...with one side of his face angry and one not...half angry. It was pretty hilarious.

In fact Jack was pretty hilarious all around and much of the time was spent trying to get Claire to not crack up. Claire had informed me that Jack had told people that she was his girlfriend. I think it's pretty clear in the last picture Jack is well aware that he's the man and Claire is going to be his girl.

Oh, forgot to mention it was the power of Skittles that got me 20 plus minutes of modeling out of Jack...well that and the power of his love for Claire.

Project Coffee; Cafe Mocha

What time is it?! Cafe Mocha time! Project coffee continued at Kader's Cafe Mocha which is at 501 St. Paul St, right across from Penn Station. It is tucked away in the Post Office building, a hidden little gem. It really was nice though, everything from the chalk colored menus to the delicious curry sandwich! It's really too bad more people don't know about it, it's such a nice space that would be a good place to hang out. 

Sean Scheidt and I met up and talked about advertising, photo shoots, love, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Basically our normal conversation material.